Statistics: from association to modelling causality

Building on learning from your first-year statistics modules, we move into more complex forms of regression (linear and non-linear), moderation and mediation. The classes in this module extend your knowledge and understanding of correlation and simple regression to the area of multiple regression. We consider more than one influence on a behaviour and when thinking about how those influences may work together, and possibly how they are ordered in time, whether we can say that the influence “causes” a behaviour. We also consider alternative forms of analysis for data that do not fit the methods learned so far that are needed for considering causes of behaviour.

The practical sessions in this module take a further step in growing your independence for writing and performing your own statistical analyses. By solving problems across many different datasets, we prepare you for working with your own data and analysis for your third-year project.

On successful completion of the module, you will have broadened your skills and understanding of statistics such that you can choose from among a range of methods which best suits a research question and its dataset. Also, you will have developed skills so that you can interpret the results of studies with confidence and express how general these results are likely to be across different samples and populations.